Using the TCM Pharmacopeia to Make Western-style Drugs

This 2007 article from Chemistry World reminds me why I'm glad to be doing Traditional Chinese Medicine. The key difference between TCM and Western medicine is not in the implements or the ingredients, but in the diagnostic view.

At least 1.1 billion adults and 10 per cent of children around the world are now overweight or obese, according to the International Obesity Task Force. As more people become heavier, they become vulnerable to type 2 diabetes, a potentially fatal condition. Hotamisligil's investigations have uncovered the key pathway that leads to diabetes.

Obesity makes unusual demands on fat cells - they become stressed. When a person piles on the pounds, a cellular organelle called the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is forced to work harder than usual to process the surplus fat. To cope with the extra workload, the ER normally counts on a built-in pack of chemical chaperones that help process fats and proteins.

But if the ER still feels the strain, it starts faltering, igniting a chain reaction that eventually shuts down insulin pathways and precipitates diabetes. The Harvard team hopes to prevent ER stress by supplying cells with extra chaperones. They tried supplying the ER with tauro ursodeoxycholic acid (TUDCA) and another small molecular drug PBA (4-phenyl butyric acid) as potential chaperones in two sets of obese mice.

The results were pretty spectacular: the compounds alleviated ER stress, and after one week of treatment, glucose levels in both sets of obese mice returned to normal. There was a benign effect on the liver too, reducing the presence of fatty deposits that often lead to cirrhosis.

Seriously?? If you want to reduce the strain on the endoplasmic reticulum, wouldn't losing weight via exercise and dietary regulation be a much better option than taking TUDCA and PBA? As an emergency treatment for someone with advanced type 2 diabetes, this could be very useful. But taking black bear bile and then continuing to lead a sedentary lifestyle and eat excessive amounts of sugar and fatty foods is not a prescription for health.

Personally I hate taking any kind of medicine - I don't like getting acupuncture, I don't like taking bitter herbs, and I don't like eating bland food. I do love to move, and that's my usual medicine - lots and lots of exercise. So I don't understand why people could be content with taking powerful drugs every day for the rest of their lives. To me, it defies comprehension, but I have met people like that - "yeah, I'm sick, I have such-and-such condition, but the doctor gave me a prescription, so now I'm taking Tulupa (hexomethacripulate 600mg)" - and that's the end of the story. Really? So, how long will you be taking that for? "I don't know, the doctor didn't say." EEEEERRRRRRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!! It's just odd to to me. I don't get it. Why do you want to poison yourself like that? Medicine is not benign. There are always side effects - get out your magnifying glass and read the package insert. Chinese herbs tend to have much milder side effects, which is why when I'm sick that's my first option.

Take a look at the whole article here.

[Note: there is no such drug as Tulupa. As far as I know.]

Weight Loss Update

Earlier we brought you the story of Alonzo Bland, the Detroiter who lost over 250 pounds at the Aimin Weight Loss Clinic in China with the help of Chinese herbs, acupuncture, massage, cupping, and of course a well-planned diet and exercise regime. Here is a video on the same story.

I like that he says "Weight loss... it's up to me. But Traditional Chinese Medicine will help that along." The number one thing that can help people, no matter what your disease, is changing your mindset, changing your thoughts. You can take any kind of medicine from drugs to surgery to herbs and acupuncture, but if you don't change the way you think, you'll never get better. It looks like Alonzo Bland is on the right track.

FYI: This story was produced by New Tang Dynasty Television, which was founded by and affiliated with followers of Falun Dafa, and organization which has been labeled an "evil cult" by the Chinese government. Some of the stories therefore have a very anti-PRC government flavor.

Here's a link to a radio story that ran on NPR.

Green tea catechins linked to weight loss

More news about green tea! It's good for weight loss too.

See the full study here.

More About Sugar

That's a model of the Mormom temple in Salt Lake City, made with sugar cubes.

Most Americans eat too much sugar. We drink too much soda, eat too much ice cream, and ingest a huge amount of sugars from sources we might not suspect, like bread. Many commercially available pre-sliced breads (great for sandwiches!) have high-fructose corn syrup added as a softener and preservative.

The New York Times has a pretty good discussion of some of America's problems with sugar, corn syrup, obesity, soda and so on.

Here are some of the good parts:

Neither ordinary sugar — sucrose — nor high-fructose corn syrup contains any nutrients other than sweet calories, and both are added in prodigious amounts to beverages and many foods that offer few if any nutrients to compensate for their caloric input.

“What consumers need to do is cut down on both,” Dr. Jacobson said. “Sugary foods either add calories or replace other, more nutritious foods.”

The article gives first place to those who claim there's nothing really wrong with high fructose corn syrup, but ends with links to three studies showing the exact opposite:

“It is not surprising that several studies have found changes in circulating lipids when subjects eat high-fructose diets,” he wrote in an editorial in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2007. A study by Elizabeth J. Parks and colleagues at the University of Minnesota, for example, found that triglyceride levels rose when people consumed mixtures containing more fructose than glucose.

Another study, by nephrologists at the University of Florida, found that fructose consumption raised blood levels of uric acid, which can foster “metabolic syndrome,” a condition of insulin resistance and abdominal obesity associated with heart disease and diabetes.

And a study by Chi-Tang Ho, professor of food science at Rutgers University, found “astonishingly high” levels of substances called reactive carbonyls in 11 carbonated soft drinks. These molecules, which form when fructose and glucose are unbound, are believed to cause tissue damage. They are elevated in the blood of people with diabetes and linked to complications of the disease. Dr. Ho estimated that a can of soda has five times the concentration of reactive carbonyls found in the blood of an adult with diabetes.

Detroit Native Loses Over 250 Pounds at Chinese Weight-Loss Clinic with the Help of Acupuncture

Here is an interesting article from USA Today about obesity in China. The focal point of the article is Alonzo Bland, who won a year-long stay at the Aimin Fat Reduction Hospital, courtesy of China Connection, a firm that promotes medical tourism to China.

Side note: mixed in with the straight-ahead reporting is a curiously out-of-place bit of chest-beating propagandizing. Apparently China was "kept thin by poverty and communist policies in the 20th century" rather than rice farming and vegetable eating. It's even funnier when you consider the whole quote:

The once-slim Chinese nation, kept thin by poverty and communist policies in the 20th century, is now on the fast track to a U.S.-style obesity crisis.

Gee, who should we cheer for? The Chinese government, which has finally seen the light and unleashed capitalism, prosperity, and therefore obesity on the people? Or America? (still the world leader in something! Obesity, in this case)

Obese People Enjoy Food Less

According to a new study (pdf), obese people enjoy food less than lean people do.

"We originally thought obese people would experience more reward from food. But we see obese people only anticipate more reward; they get less reward. It is an ironic process," Stice tells WebMD.

According to Chinese medicine, most obese people have an accumulation of dampness in the middle burner. When dampness is present in the Stomach or Spleen, there will be hunger but without any desire to eat.

How is that possible? What do you mean dampness? What's a middle burner?

Chinese medicine is an ancient method which uses a sophisticated system of outward observation to discern what is happening on the inside. They didn't have x-ray machines or MRIs thousands of years ago. Heck, they didn't even have blood tests. Chinese medicine was forced to develop methods of "imaging" the inside of the body by observance of outward symbols - nearly all of which have proven to be incredibly accurate in terms of today's modern anatomy and physiology. The image that we as Chinese medicine practitioners gather is necessarily more metaphorical than Western biomedicine - but that does not make it any less accurate. Indeed, often Western medicine misses the forest for the trees by focusing on the minutiae of bacteria and blood cell counts, while failing to deduce the overall situation of the patient.

I say all that to help me explain dampness. "Dampness" on the inside of the body is what happens when your food and fluids do not properly separate. In a healthy human system, food enters the Stomach, where it undergoes "ripening and rotting" (a term that rather nicely describes the contractions of smooth muscle and secretions of digestive enzymes that takes place). The Spleen extracts the essence of the food, the food energy, if you will, and sends it on its merry way to the next stage of processing.

If the Spleen is weak, it can't properly extract all the food essences from the chewed-up remnants of the Double-Double you just ate. Some portion of the unrefined food energy then sits in your middle burner, where it combines with the fluids of your body to form a kind of sludgy mud we call dampness. As you become fatter, your Spleen becomes weaker, forming what Dr. Naiqiang Gu likes to call "the vicious circle."

As for the middle burner, that's a Chinese medicine term for the general region of the middle of your body. The important organs there are your Spleen and Stomach. The upper burner refers to the upper part of the body (Heart and Lungs) and the lower burner refers, of course, to the lower part of your body and includes the Kidneys, the Bladder, and all the organs of excretion and reproduction. The Liver is anatomically situated within the middle burner, but because of its importance is considered to be functionally deeper in the body and therefore part of the lower burner.

Now how about that "hunger without desire to eat" bit? Well, imagine you have dampness in your middle burner (now that we're all on the same page with that). Your Spleen-Pancreas is underperforming, but it still works - you get some gas and bloating after you eat, you've developed food allergies, maybe you have occasional diarrhea, but you can still eat most things. Your body figures that getting sixty-five percent of the available energy from food is better than not eating at all, and thus you still get hungry. But there's that dampness sitting in your middle burner. Let's suppose that you don't exercise as much as you should and you haven't changed how you eat, so the dampness continues to accumulate. Thus your body doesn't receive the food with the same relish that it might were your middle burner to be nice and clean.

How to break out of this vicious circle? How to rid oneself of dampness and extra weight? For starters, eat less and exercise more. Then, limit or avoid greasy, fried, and fatty foods. Alcohol and soda should also be avoided as they contribute greatly to dampness. And of course, go see your acupuncturist for a treatment and an herbal formula that is customized to your constitution. Your Chinese medicine doctor has many many herbs and formulas at his or her disposal which have a remarkable effect on the digestion.

Condition-Specific Websites, Diabetes, HFCS

This article in the New York Times led me in turn to this website by and for people with diabetes, which in turn led me to this blog post that follows up on the "Sweet Surprise" ad campaign that we let you know about last month. Isn't the web great?

The Times article gives you some good links for online health information, beyond what you might find with a typical Google search.

Fast Food Moratorium in South L.A.

For the past month or so, there has been a ban on new fast-food restaurants opening in South Los Angeles. In combination with incentives and tax breaks for grocery stores and restaurants with table service, the idea is to give people healthier eating options.

I think this is a great idea. Fast food is essentially junk food, empty calories that will make you feel full for awhile but lack important nutrients that your body needs. On top of that, fast food restaurants often serve the cheapest meat, which can be loaded with contaminants, unfriendly bacteria and filler. When you eat a lot of junk food, your body can only make junk energy. It's no surprise that diabetes is at epidemic levels among poor people (see the New York Times series from 2006).

This is a great first step in fighting obesity and all its related illnesses: diabetes chief among them, followed quickly by heart disease and high blood pressure. If we can get new grocery stores to open, or farmers markets to set up (click here for a list of farmer's markets in Los Angeles County), that will be a good next step.

Recommended Reading:
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser

Why 32% of American Children are Overweight